Soundscapes of a Life
Just as we are perpetually surrounded by sound, the quotidian soundscapes of the places we have lived in become subtly embedded in our sense of home, familiarity and belonging, and, by extension, in the fabric of our memory and identity.
Soundscapes of a Life is an interactive sound installation and conversation piece, first shown at the environmental sound art festival “Lisboa Soa”, in September 2019.
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Soundscapes of a Life takes the form of a park bench fitted with seven monophones, each playing carefully selected field recordings characteristic of a city the artist has lived in: Berlin, Lisbon, Paris, Rio, Leicester, Munich. Visitors are invited to sit, listen, and enter into conversation with the artist about the soundscapes of their own life. They are then invited to explore freely, removing the monophones and holding them to their ears in any combination they choose.
The result of listening to one city with one ear and another with the second can produce a stereo cacophony, a sonic image of something otherwise impossible: the migrant desire to exist in many places at once. For a moment, the bench becomes a time machine of simultaneity, offering what no passport or plane ticket can, the superpower of being fully, bodily present in more than one place, more than one life, at the same time.
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Soundscapes of a Life takes the form of a park bench fitted with seven monophones, each playing carefully selected field recordings characteristic of a city the artist has lived in: Berlin, Lisbon, Paris, Rio, Leicester, Munich. Visitors are invited to sit, listen, and enter into conversation with the artist about the soundscapes of their own life. They are then invited to explore freely, removing the monophones and holding them to their ears in any combination they choose.
The result of listening to one city with one ear and another with the second can produce a stereo cacophony, a sonic image of something otherwise impossible: the migrant desire to exist in many places at once. For a moment, the bench becomes a time machine of simultaneity, offering what no passport or plane ticket can, the superpower of being fully, bodily present in more than one place, more than one life, at the same time.
